“I suppose he does,” William said mildly. “Rather courageous of him to go take up arms against them, isn’t it?”
She made a noise like an angry cat and flounced away from him.
“So he wouldn’t come back to Savannah with you. Why didn’t you just go yourself? You know the Greys would welcome you with open arms—if only because you’d take Trev off their hands.”
She breathed hard through her nose, then suddenly flounced back round to face him.
“I did see Ben. I saw him in bed with a black-haired whore who was sucking his—” Choler choked her as efficiently as Ben had likely choked his inamorata when he saw Amaranthus looming in the doorway.
William hesitated to say anything, for fear of making her leap up and run inside. Instead, he placed his hand on the bench between them, barely touching her fingers. And waited.
“He got up and pushed me into his dressing room and kept me from going back into the bedroom until she’d got up and run, the filthy twat.”
“Where the devil did you learn a word like that?” he asked, truly shocked.
“A book of erotic poetry in Lord John’s library,” she said, glowering at him. “I would have killed both of them, right there, if I’d had any bloody thing to do it with. You don’t go to a reunion with your estranged husband with a knife in your shoe, though, do you?” She stared down at her naked left hand. “I yanked my ring off and tried to make him swallow it. I almost managed, too,” she said, defiant. There were tears of rage slicked down her cheeks, but she didn’t seem aware of them.
“I’m sorry you didn’t,” he said, and took a careful breath. “I don’t excuse Ben, by any means, but … he’s a soldier, and he thought you’d left him forever. I mean, a—a casual liaison—”
“Casual, my arse!” she snarled, snatching her hand away. “He’s married her!”
The words struck him in the pit of the stomach. William opened his mouth, but found nothing whatever to say.
“That’s why I brought the ring away with me,” she said, looking at it. “I wouldn’t let her have it!”
Of course she’d also needed it for her widow’s imposture, but he rather thought that continuing to wear it—if even on the right hand—might be something in the nature of a hair shirt for her, but didn’t say that.
“Marry me,” he said, instead.
She was frowning at a bird that had landed on the edge of the fountain to drink—a dressy little creature with black-and-white wings and dark red sides.
“Towhee,” she said.
“What?”
“Him.” She lifted her chin toward the bird, who promptly flew off. She turned on the bench to look William full in the face, her own features more or less composed.
“Marry you,” she said slowly. A twitch she couldn’t control showed briefly at the corner of her pale mouth, but he didn’t think it was an impulse to laugh. Maybe shock, maybe not.
“Marry me,” he said again, softly. Her eyes were bloodshot, and now a cloudy gray. She looked away.
“You mean a marriage blanc, I suppose?” she said, her voice a little hoarse. “Separate lives, separate beds?”
“Oh, no,” he said, and took hold of both her hands. “I definitely want to bed you. Repeatedly. What sort of marriage do you call that?”
“Well, bigamy, for a start.” She was looking at him in a different way, though, and the blood was thrumming in his chest.
“We can discuss the details on the way back to Savannah.” Still holding her hands tightly in his, he leaned down and kissed her. Her mouth moved under his, more in shock than response—but response it was.
“I did not say I’d do it!” she said, jerking back. He let her go, noting with a distant satisfaction that she hadn’t wiped her mouth in disgust.
“You can give me your answer when we get to Savannah,” he said, and, getting to his feet, he offered her his hand.
135
Just to Make Things Interesting
IN A SMALL TOWN to the south of Philadelphia, he’d hired them rooms in a decent inn and was pleased to find a small looking glass on the wall above his washbasin. He’d shaved carefully—Amaranthus had been first shocked and then amused by the discovery that his sprouting beard was a vivid dark red—and then dressed in his captain’s uniform, somewhat creased from being rolled up in his portmanteau, but clean.
She blinked when he got into the coach beside her and placed his hat on his knee.
“I thought you’d resigned your commission.”
“I did. I have. This is what you might call a ruse de guerre,” he said, gesturing at his scarlet coat. “Uncle Hal’s idea. He gave me a temporary captain’s commission, with orders for travel that would let me pass through any territory controlled by the King’s troops—which Richmond and Charles Town most assuredly are. I wasn’t joking,” he added gently. “He was worried about you and he does want you back.”
She glanced away, out the window, and bit her lip.
“I should have thought an earl would be shown a certain amount of courtesy, even without a uniform.”
“I’m not an earl, either,” he said firmly, and her head swiveled sharply round. She stared at him.
“I should have said, before,” he said. “If you were considering being a countess as part of the perquisites of marrying me, I’m afraid that’s off.”
“I wasn’t,” she said, and her mouth twitched slightly. She turned back to the window, through which the muddy streets of Richmond were giving way to equally rain-soaked cornfields.
“How did you manage it?” she said, not turning round. “I thought Father Pardloe told you a peer couldn’t stop being a peer without the permission of the King. Did you persuade the King?”
“I haven’t spoken to His Majesty yet,” William said politely. “But I shall. Still, it doesn’t matter what he says; I’ve made up my mind, and I’m not the Earl of Ellesmere anymore—if I ever was.”
That did make her turn around.
He felt a sudden rush of … something. Maybe fear but mostly excitement, as though he were just about to jump from a high cliff into the sea, not knowing if the water was deep enough and not caring.
“I’m a bastard,” he said. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, and he felt sure it wouldn’t be the last, but he took a deep breath before going on. “I mean—I’m not legally a bastard, because the eighth earl and my mother were married when I was born. But the old earl wasn’t my father.”
She looked him slowly up and down, pausing at his face, her gaze traveling down and up again.
“Well, whoever he was, he must have been a, um … very striking gentleman. Is that where—” She pawed vaguely at her chin, still staring at him.
“Yes,” he said, not quite between his teeth. “And not ‘was’—he’s still alive.”
“You’ve met him?” She’d turned entirely to face him, her eyes alive with interest. He had the sudden illusion that he could feel the touch of her eyes on his face, tickling his skin.